Hot dish 07.01.24

By Josie Albertson-Grove

Happy Monday and happy July.

Today is the first day for University of Minnesota President Rebecca Cunningham, and reporter Liz Navratil caught up with her to ask about the university’s intent to buy its teaching hospital and the U’s investment portfolio amid Israel divestment debates.

Cunningham also addressed academic integrity after Minnesota researchers had to retract two major studies on Alzheimer’s last week, following a years-long investigation into the work published in the 2000s, Cunningham said the problem was not uncommon at major universities, especially with papers published 20 years ago or more. She said more safeguards are in place now, but universities still push researchers.

“Faculty, unfortunately, are under a tremendous pressure to publish,” Cunningham said. “And we have to work on the climate and support for them so that we they can focus on feeling good about the science they produced, even when it doesn’t produce the results they were hoping for — which is true science.”

FLOODS: Last week, I took a field trip to Henderson, where Mayor Keith Swenson (and his pup Lucy) showed photographer Richard Tsong-Taatarii and me around some of the low-lying roads that flood every year.

Swenson and several others said it’s been challenging to plan for projects to raise those roads above flood level, because state bonding funds are wildly unpredictable, as Trey Mewes and I reported. Two massive bonding bills passed in 2020 and 2023, including the bizarre COVID-era October 2020 bill — but Minnesota had no bonding bills in 2021, 2022 and 2024.

However, Minnesota is one of only a few states that has a dedicated state flood mitigation program, said Matt Bauman, who runs the grant program housed within the DNR. In part because the state has been chipping away at anti-flood projects, Bauman said the damage we are seeing from last week’s flooding is not as bad as it is in other states that rely solely on FEMA money for flood mitigation.

Fun fact that did not make it into the story: There is a mural of Prince astride a motorcycle on one of the buildings in downtown Henderson (which is extremely cute by the way, I’d strongly recommend a trip for Sauerkraut Days next year, or just a stop for ice cream at Schutte’s). I asked Swenson about the mural, and he said it exists because a scene from Purple Rain was shot in Henderson. Apollonia did not purify herself in Lake Minnetonka, as the Kid notes in the movie. According to Swenson, she jumped into the Minnesota River in Henderson.

ASYLUM: Minnesota immigration judges grant asylum claims heard in their closed courtrooms at Fort Snelling at wildly different rates, Maya Rao reported.

For example, one judge approved 60% of asylum cases in a five-year span — the highest rate by far among the six immigration judges at Fort Snelling for whom statistics are available. Another judge approved just 11% of claims in the same period.

Such disparities nationwide have created a system that some legal scholars have dubbed “refugee roulette,” Rao writes, in which a randomly assigned judge plays a large role in whether an asylum seeker wins their case.

The varying asylum approval rates are “outrageous … it’s a decades-long problem and nobody cares to solve it,” St. Paul immigration attorney Kim Hunter said.

The National Association of Immigration Judges President Mimi Tsankov noted that no two cases are alike and each judge must weigh the nuances of immigration law.

HENNEPIN: Republican party leaders in the western suburbs are distancing themselves from Marisa Simonetti, the alleged tarantula-tosser running for Hennepin County board against former state Rep. Heather Edelson, a DFLer.

Edelson handily won a May special election against Simonetti for the nonpartisan seat representing Edina, Hopkins, Minnetonka and a handful of cities on Lake Minnetonka.

Third Congressional District Republicans chair Randy Sutter said the group will not endorse or recommend Simonetti for any office in the district and took back the group’s endorsement of Simonetti for the May special election, “in light of the recent arrest of Marisa Simonetti for domestic assault, coupled with significant other information about her that has come to our attention.”

WHERE’S WALZ:

Gov. Tim Walz is up north today (or is he?).

Walz meets with the Red Lake Nation Tribal Council at 9 a.m., and will tour Bemidji Steel at 11:45 a.m.

At 1 p.m., Walz will speak at the opening of the Bemidji Veterans Home.

READING LIST